


Desert fevers

by Sionnan



Category: Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Genre: Malaria, Sick Fic, vague cultutral and historical innacuracies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-13 04:35:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19243957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sionnan/pseuds/Sionnan
Summary: Lawrence has an attack of malaria. Ali is there to take care of him.





	Desert fevers

**Author's Note:**

> Any and all information I have about how the bedu handle malaria has been more or less taken from "Oasis Fever: Malaria as a Factor in Arabian Agricultural Slavery".

The world swims around him and he pitches, ungracefully, to one knee. The camel behind him grunts loudly, and he can feel the animal's heat crowd up behind him as it stops short, but thankfully does not trample him.

His right side is blisteringly hot, and something soft and dry is pressed against his face. After a second, he realizes he has dropped, slumped to the sand, and in the same instant a kind of self preserving horror overtakes him. 

He tries to get his right arm under him, fighting against the nausea that is roiling n his gut, and the violent pitching of the horizon. He takes a deep, steadying breath through his nose as he pushes up, inhales sand, and spends a few moments alternately retching and coughing. Behind him, around him, he hears the melodic, rapid fire of bedu Arabic, and half wonders if the men are walking around him, headed for the camp of the well oasis.

His pondering is cut short, when he hears Ali's distinctive tone, sharp and somewhat dismissive of everyone, over his head, and feels a familiar, warm hand on his back. A sudden swath of shade is cast over him, and Lawrence glances, blinking, up into the filtered brilliance of the desert sun peeking through the weave of Sherif Ali's keffiyah, and under that, Ali's bold, brown face glancing worriedly down at him.

Lawrence huffs a laugh, about to softly reassure Ali that absolutely nothing is wrong (when of course it is), and he hears Ali ask if he's sun struck, when the first of the violent shiver wracks through him.

They both are caught up short as Lawrence's limbs reflexively clasp together, and after a second it passes and Lawrence gasps. Ali peers out of the makeshift tent of his keffiyah and shouts to someone to get water. One of his thin brown hands touches Lawrence's forehead, gently. 

Lawrence shuts his eyes against the sun, the nausea, the unbearable kindness of this gesture. He tries to summon up the horror at this humiliation, to push himself up from his prostration in the sand. He cannot let these men think he's weak. 

His thoughts are a welter, lined with a sort of malarial yellow, and a bright wave of full body pain crashes over him. He rides the crest, thankful for this momentary lapse of power. When he comes to, he distantly realizes Ali's face looks positively anguished. 

Lawrence can only summon a distant curiosity, and he lifts a hand, meant to maybe wrap in Ali's robes to reassure him, or pat at his jaw like a brother. He barely manages to lift his hand above his body, and Ali presses it back down to his chest. His Arabic is so fast and wrapped in colloquialisms that Lawrence can only catch the gist of what he is saying, but it seems meant to reassure him.

Ali's voice is almost pleading. "El Aurens, answer me. Can you hear me? Eh?"

"I'm here, Ali." He swallows, his mouth bone dry against the desert air, and winces. A wetted cloth is pressed against his lips, the trickle of water from the fabric slipping into his mouth. It's the kind of treatment for a sick man, and Lawrence feels a kind of resignation that several rather important warrior of these proud tribes are reduced to fussing over an Englishman.

Ali is navigating with someone above Lawrence's head, and Lawrence catches that Ali is of the opinion they can't strap the man to a damn camel, and Lawrence privately agrees. Camels are among the most ungainly of beasts to ride for even the most sturdy of limb.

After a few more seconds of volatile exchanges, the men start to agree to creating some kind of litter, when Lawrence pushes himself up on his elbows. Ali gasps reflexively, and Lawrence feels his hands under his back, so he tries to push himself up more. Ali's face appears, inverted, over his. 

His tone is stern, the tone he adopts when he is sure Lawrence is doing something foolhardy. "Aurens, don't move. An evil spirit attacked you."

Lawrence is puzzled, and wonders if his swoon worried them. The men have seen swoons before, and Lawrence cannot remember them acting this way. "what happened?" he asks, and detests the quaver in his voice.

Ali tisks as he swipes a wet cloth over his head-- someone, probably Ali-- has removed Lawrence's fine keffiyeh, and his head is bare, letting the water trickle across his scalp. His voice is aggrieved, rather than harsh, the voice of a brother who is beside himself. "You shook, and your eyes were white." 

Lawrence is horrified. He has a malarial convulsion, one that was witnessed by god knew how many warriors. If it were only Daud or Farraj, he would be able to convince them not to worry, as his masterful manner usually assuaged them. The warriors are a diverse bunch, and many of them have deep superstitions of malaria. It would be a great blow to their morale if they feared their Aurens were to die.

He thinks back on the old traveler in England, who had warned him years ago, at the request of an old school advisor, of the dangers of the Arabian peninsula. He thinks wryly back, and is somewhat disheartened to think that of all the dangers he has survived, previous bouts of malaria included, that it should be the source of his demise.

He sighs and slumps back slightly, Ali taking the weight. Several other warriors have knelt around them, pitching in their opinions. Lawrence feels Ali move up behind him, feels the lines of Ali's body against his back as he props Lawrence against him, and his arms loop around to Lawrence's front to lift a water skin to his lips. Lawrence reaches up to grasp at the mouth of the bag, fingers closing lightly around Ali's, as he struggles to steady his head and align the bag with his lips. He drinks the cool, mineral tasting water of the well, and after a second his head drops back when his neck can't hold up the weight any longer. 

Ali says something rude to one of the other warriors, in response to his suggestion they strap the litter behind a camel. Lawrence manages to lift his voice enough to suggest walking the fifty yards or so to the camp. He is met with dismayed and vocal dissent, several men pointing out he nearly just died. (They are wrong, probably, but Lawrence doesn't have the energy to argue.) 

Finally, a body slave runs up to their little convention, bearing a sturdy length of cloth, and the men at once mobilize. Lawrence can feel the heat of the fever building up again, a kind of unbearable internal heat that combined with the desert heat makes him feel as though he was boiling alive. As Ali lays him back, he cannot stop a small, single note whimper from escaping the back of his throat, nor can he halt the traitorous tear, born of the trifecta of high emotion, physical discomfort, and embarrassment, from tracking from the corner of his eye. 

As they lift his thin (too thin, he realizes now) form onto the cloth, Ali's face is close to his for a moment, and he hears Ali whisper, "Do not cry, Aurens, you cannot waste water in the desert, it will suck you dry." It braces Lawrence for a moment, and he feels Ali's callused fingers brush the moisture away.

They lift him, and as they begin to move, his stomach drops again. For a sliver of a second, he wishes he were back on the hot sand, wishes he could just die there, because this horrible pitching is like being at sea in a terrible storm. There is an urgent, excited babble among the men, and it mingles with the cries of oasis birds, and the world fades around him, narrowing to a circle of faded gray.

The circle closes around him, like a well cover being drawn over him, and the darkness overtakes him. 

In the darkness, there is a distant, undulating, warm line of sound. In the darkness, a warm wetness of voices wash over him, the terrible grinding sound of mortar shells and airplane mortars under all. In the darkness, he hears a muezzin call the faithful with his undulating cry. 

When he wakes, he is cold and clammy, and the air around him smells wet. He can feel his body shaking, like a branch in a high wind. His head is throbbing like a war drum, and a small sound of pain escapes him. He hears someone moving, and a man's form kneels next to him. It is too big to be Farraj or Daud, and he is somewhat puzzled but relieved when Ali's face resolves in the darkness. He has a small, shallow bowl of milk, which he tips to Lawrence's mouth, wordlessly. 

It is sweet, and Lawrence can only take a scant mouth of it, his throat too sore to take any more, and his stomach too uncertain. 

"Aurens." The word sounds like a prayer. Lawrence closes his eyes against it, not wanting the sudden moisture that draws there to betray him. "Ali." He is surprised he manages that much, and that it is audible. A small smile plays on his mouth.

He wonders how much his illness has delayed them. He opens his eyes, and meets Ali's enormous, dark eyes in the half dark of a moonlit desert night. The moments stretch out, timeless, and Lawrence's worry abates, quieting itself like a restless cat. Ali reaches forward with a cloth and dabs at Lawrence's face. He says, with utter conviction, "You will not die here, Aurens. It is not written."

The contrarian rears up in Lawrence, half imp and half self-loathing Englishman. His regard for his friend squashes the impulse, and he hears himself mirroring Ali. "It is not written." He dozes then, and wake a few hours later to feel Ali's shoulder near his, and realizes Ali must have put him in his own tent. Lawrence is grateful they didn't just dig a sleeping grave and sink him into it, and realizes that the tent has meant they have decided to camp longer than a night.

The fever lasts for four days, and then breaks at nightfall. They have not had the supplies for a four day camp, and have been traveling for two, both days that Lawrence simply cannot recall. They are utterly lost to him, although he recalls scattered fragments of being tied to someone's back, though at the time he thought it was a fever dream. 

Ali would relate to him, later, his fear of Lawrence's burning hot body pressed to his back, as though a djinn, a creature made of fire, had infested him. They had reached a small village on the morning of the fourth day, and Lawrence had been laid in a tent the whole day while Ali and several of the more senior men had discussed their options.

Feeling weak but mercifully cool, Lawrence manages to sit himself up, and was listening to the sweet sound of frog songs, that had collected in the streams and pools in the irrigation streams around the village.

He glances out across the falling dusk, and he smiles. "Nothing is written."


End file.
